Today is International Women’s Day! This week we challenge you to take a portrait of a woman in your life.

What does this person mean to you? What is her story? Feel free to share a bit about your portrait if you’d like.

In Lesson 5, Annie shares her experience photographing American feminist activist and writer, Gloria Steinem. This photograph was part of Annie’s “WOMEN: New Portraits” exhibition that was shown in cities worldwide in 2016.

Penny was confined to a hospital room the last time I saw her. She’d come to know that confinement because of what happened a few months before. Penny, someone who always seemed healthy, invincible even, came home from singing in a cathedral and went to sleep. She was not feeling unwell, or in discomfort. There was nothing that would make her consider her life was in danger. Early in the morning, her heart stopped. One cardiac arrest is terrifying enough. Penny had four. She is alive today for many reasons: the actions of the ambulance crew called to her home, the amazing people who work in NHS hospitals, her fortitude, and this is the most important part, her parents. They saved her life, with her father performing CPR until the paramedics arrived. Penny now has a defibrillator implanted in her arm, and can concentrate on her life at the Royal Central School for Speech and Drama in London, where she is studying acting: musical theatre. And while my concentration when I met her should have been about those studies, about how her dream was being fulfilled, all I could think of was how close this world came to losing her.